


These Quiet Places

by brasspetal



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Magical Realism, another world - Freeform, bittersweet but mostly sweet, silver has both legs, they are saps for each other, they live in a cottage by the sea, witchy!Silver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 19:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12065319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brasspetal/pseuds/brasspetal
Summary: The sea is a fortune teller.--A collection of moments on a nameless isle with two souls very much entwined.





	These Quiet Places

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing fluff of any kind lol I hope you enjoy! :)
> 
> Check out the beautiful art inspired by this fic [here](http://sjuulsjuul.tumblr.com/post/167241588509/sjuulsjuul-based-on-this-fic-by-brassfannibal)

The sea is a fortune teller. James Flint has spent his life inside it and in those Doldrums of grief, he found purpose in viciousness. There is not a quieter place but where the sea whispers along the edges of sand. Flint presses his bare feet into it before the tide swims over him.

Today is better than most, there is a certain peace here where things end. His heart still leaps into a fluttered rhythm when he spots the figure with wild hair picking up sea shells like they are precious things.

Silver has been collecting rocks and shells the same color as Flint’s eyes. He told him so and Flint had scoffed at the ridiculousness of it but found himself searching for something blue hidden in the sand to match. The first day Flint had gingerly set a blue shell in front of Silver who lit up like a moonbeam and now it’s become a contest. The sappy kind of contest that Flint never imagined he’d be playing. Silver’s smile is wide and devious when he approaches Flint; it’s a breathtaking sight. The sight of Silver always approaching Flint; never leaving.

\--

“I sometimes think you’re a ghost,” Flint says quietly into the top of Silver’s head, who has his face resting on Flint’s bare collarbone. He kisses that hair softly, sweetly and it always smells of sea air. Silver lifts his head to look him in the eye. “Perhaps we're both dead and haunt this island.” Silver answers and looks amused at the prospect.

“And how did we perish?” Flint asks.

“Swimming nude in a tempest.” Silver supplies and Flint chuckles, shaking them both with it.

“I would never do that. I don’t think you know me at all.” Flint says, the smile remaining in his words.

Silver smirks, his eyes lighting up and there’s a challenge there and Flint shakes his head. “No, John.”

Silver pushes up quick from him as the thunder rumbles with a fury outside. “If we’re already dead it won’t matter, will it?”

“Christ…” Flint says and Silver throws the door open and runs out into the storm completely devoid of clothing like a madman. Flint throws on a pair of britches and peers out of the cottage doorway. He’s blasted with sideways rainwater and stumbles outside, forcing the door to the cottage closed. He spots the figure that is Silver motioning him to follow like a beckoning sea nymph. Silver collapses into the wild waves, disappearing for long enough to have Flint’s heart leap into his throat. He reappears just as lightning cracks apart the sky. Flint stands at the edge of the tide, like a precipice between one world and another. “You can’t just stand there!” Silver calls, spluttering. “Come find me.” And then he promptly disappears into the sea. Flint hesitates and then steps into the waves, that cradle him more than drag him under. He lets the tide pull him out into the darkness and before the panic from his stupidity sets in, Silver surfaces in front of him, lighted by yet another lightning strike. Flint concludes that John Silver is indeed an otherworldly creature, formed from glimmering seashells and sand.  “Are we dead yet?” Flint asks, feigning irritation.

“Almost.” Silver says and swims closer to him, bumping his cold wet nose with his before colliding their lips. Silver opens his mouth to him immediately without hesitation and it’s like tasting the depths of the sea. Thunder cracks, startling them both and they laugh between breathes.

“Wait a minute…are you wearing britches?” Silver asks, squinting at him.

James sighs and rests his hands on Silver’s shoulders, “Yes, I’m not going to run around nude.”

“The ritual won’t work if you don’t adhere to the strict code.” Silver admonishes. Lightning cracks above them but Silver doesn’t flinch as if he’s made from it and there’s a spark in his eyes from the death of the bolt.

Flint begrudgingly complies and lets the old pair of britches find a home in the deep.

“Let us dash to pieces on the promontory.” Silver suggests and points to the sharp jagged rocks.

It’s then that Flint realizes with perfect clarity that Silver could ask anything of him in this moment and he would do it with a smile stolen from lightning.

Later, they make love like two creatures out of folklore in the dark of the storm; with Flint tangled in wet strands of Silver’s sandy hair.

\--

 _“I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret, overruling decree, that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open”_ Silver reads.

Flint blinks at him tiredly from the bed, there’s a dried cloth on his forehead and the sheets are a mess. His fever has just broken and he can finally coherently look upon his lover with ease once again. Silver shuts the book and watches him with exhausted relief. He has dark circles forming underneath his eyelids and his skin is pale, ghostly in the moonlight.

“I believe it’s your turn to rest.” Flint rasps and coughs. Silver crawls over to him with a quiet sadness and wraps himself over him without preamble. He tangles his legs with his and rests his face in the crook of Flint’s neck. He kisses him softly once there for good measure. The pressure is uncomfortable but Flint isn’t going to begrudge him.

“Never do that again…” Silver says.

“Become ill? I’ll be sure to let my body know that is not to be tolerated.” Flint conveys and smirks slightly.

“Good…” Silver says and he can feel his breath on his throat, “because I’m coming with you.”

“Coming with me?” Flint questions and squeezes his hand on Silver’s back. He hadn’t been eating properly these last several days. He feels fragile. Even though Flint would never voice that.

“If your ghost leaves then I have to follow. It’s the rules.” Silver discloses.

“Ah, I see and where would we go?” Flint asks, studying the spider webs in the ceiling above.

“We’d haunt the sea instead of this isle. We’d be the storms that men feared and ships battle through. We’d dally calmly in the sunlight where we once starved and house sharks in our currents.” Silver lips brush against his pulse as he speaks and the tickle of it brought him back into this moment.

“For now, we escaped that fate,” Flint says to the mass of dark hair beneath his lips.

“I cannot be without you.” Silver confesses and grips his shirt with a strange ferocity.

“Nor I, my love,” Flint says softly.

\--

The bonfire dances and pops towards the clear night sky; reaching forever upward towards the north star. “How many worlds exists in those tiny clusters of light?” Silver asks.

“How many worlds exist here?” Flint asks and turns to see Silver blow beach weed from his palm into the fire, putting a spell on the flames. They crackle pleasantly at the offering. Silver lifts his hand to the sky and the moon brightens to his greeting. Flint feels the darkness closing in around the flame light and he stands and crunches towards Silver who smiles when he notices his proximity. They’d never let those invisible creatures of doubt into these flames.

“We have to banish the night,” Flint replies and he didn’t wait long before he presses his lips to Silver’s insistently. Silver understands Flint’s reasons for everything. He understands without speaking. Flint can breathe and Silver can map out all the things he held inside him. They stumble up the beach path, limbs entwined and lips claiming the other. They crumble and fall onto the cottage floor with an ‘oof’ and Silver laughs loudly into his mouth. Flint swallows it, wanting that laugh to become a part of him and rest in his ribs.

When they’ve reached the bed and Flint hovers over Silver, he admires the blue in Silver’s eyes blown wide with adoration and wonder; their rhythm a sweet tranquil reverie. It unravels Flint how Silver can see such things in him, brought to light by only the man beneath him.

He whispers into Flint’s mouth the reasons why his heart belongs in his palms. He whispers them until the night is banished. Flint wants nothing more than to stay moulded in Silver and never separate.

\--

In the light of day Silver rests on his knees cupping a dead bird beneath the sun. Flint stands in front of him curiously and Silver tilts his chin at him.

“What happened to the bird?” Flint questions.

“Lost in a tempest and found itself here.” Silver replies and his blue eyes sparkle like the sea in the bright day. Flint’s heart hurts to look at him sometimes, it’s too much but he didn’t turn away this time.

“Why are you hold—” Flint begins but is interrupted when the bird flutters to life in Silver’s palms and sits up through the ruffled feathers. It eyes them both as if they had somehow inconvenience it and takes flight towards the sun like Icarus. Flint didn’t ask, he already knew, deep down he knew all that is Silver.

Silver stands with a knowing smirk, “Things don’t come here to die.”

“They come to be reborn?” Flint asks and is afraid of the answer but it’s an answer that never comes. Silver didn’t know the truth of it either. They exist in the between and all at once. They are the light, the air, and the breathless tangle of limbs before midnight.

Flint spots a brilliant blue shell at his feet where Silver had sat and he lifts it, squinting towards the sun. It glistens like those eyes.

\--

They’re sitting at the table having finished dinner and the sun is a heavy light on the horizon. Its vibrancy is waning.

“Why don’t we get visitors?” Silver asks, looking wistfully towards the growing night.

“I don’t think anyone knows we're here,” Flint replies and furrows his brow.

“Do you remember?” Silver questions and Flint asks with a simple quiet ‘hmm’

Silver continues, “How we came to be here?”

“I had thought we're ghosts that died swimming nude in a tempest?” Flint adds and a smile grows on Silver’s face, where it should always remain, hidden or no. His lips should curl into that lovely expression for eternity.

“I’m beginning to rethink my theory.” Silver replies and Flint crosses his arms in anticipation.

“What’s your theory now?”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it? We’re here now, in an endless stream of days.” Silver recites.

There’s a quiet beauty to their breaths in the comforting silence that follows.  There are no days or even years here. There is just daylight, night and the waves crashing and receding. They are the rhythm coaxed out of the dawn and they are the guardians of these quiet bluffs. Flint imagines one can feel as though they could live forever in a place like this but he knew that to be an impossibility.

“I don’t think we’re spectres.” Flint ruminates and Silver snaps out of his own deep quiet to grace him with his tired eyes. He didn’t ask him to explain further but Flint does so without prodding.

“I think, like those stars above, there exists an infinite number of spaces, worlds of thought, worlds of action. And in one of those worlds, you and I are separate entities.”

Silver sits up, his eyes appearing glassy in the candlelight. “We can’t exist as separate entities.”

“Not here. Never here.” Flint says quietly.

“Then that’s all that really matters.” Silver says, resolute, “There is no use pondering it.”

\--

They will grow old here in these quiet places and create warmth from the dark. Flint knows this, he can see it plainly in front of him when Silver’s young face grants him the privilege of a smile. He can choreograph their hands and fingers across the hills here, over the cliffs and into the sea.

‘I love you’ Silver tells him that night, lying side by side in their warm bed. _‘I love you’_

The sleepy comfort of those quiet words gives peace to every beat and bone that gives James Flint life in a place such as this. They are the tandem and release.

Silver sets his hand lightly on Flint’s cheek and Flint wraps his fingers over it, mooring this precious thing to this unchanging shore.


End file.
